Today, while driving I saw a police car riding along next to me. Thinking about the news recently, I decided to give him a quick thumbs up and a smile to lighten up his day. He looks back, smiles, flips on his siren, and pulls me over for not paying attention to the road. FML

I think it's cool that you were showing your support. I know police across the nation are grateful people like you in the community that are standing behind them right now. Distracted driving can be dangerous, but you didn't say you were ticketed, so maybe that means he appreciated your support too? Keep on being positive, I know getting pulled over/ticketed sucks, but it's just part of the job. It's not personal.
(For some reason this part cut off from my original post).

Well, someone was trying to meet their quota. Seriously though, that's a dick move. Most of the time when people post their stories of getting ticketed on FML it's their own damn fault and the police were just doing their job, but quickly looking to the side and smiling at somebody isn't really dangerous behavior. Otherwise, why was the police officer doing the exact same thing?

Police don't actually have a quota. If you actually think about it, understanding there are traffic cops, beat cops, detectives, etc that are all able to ticket, the idea is quotas is ridiculous. Otherwise a beat cop would be hoping for multiple domestic disturbances, or gun calls, or murders. Why would a police department WANT a certain number of illegal actions in a city?

Actually, although they frequently deny that, it has been proven that there are round-about ways they actually do use a type of number-based policing. Some cops have even admitted that it's an atmosphere of, if you're not ticketing, arresting, etc then you're not working.

You definitely make sense and that's how it should be, but unfortunately, that's likely not the case.

Considering the Supreme Court ruled that police are allowed to lie to us, to get us to say or do anything, why anyone still trusts the police is beyond me. If you refuse to obey them, even over the most minor thing, they are allowed to escalate to use of deadly force. #FTP

But why would you not obey them? It's not like they go around randomly telling people to drop and give them 50 pushups or something. If they tell you to do something they generally have a damn good reason for doing it.

If you record the police, and they illegally tell you to stop filming them, there's one reason. If they come on to your property because they misread a warrant and shoot your dog or throw a flashbang grenade into your sleeping toddlers crib, that is another reason. If they declare martial law on an entire neighborhood, and level machine guns at you from heavily armored vehicles because you simply took a picture of them, that's another reason. The police are not law enforcement, they are revenue generators and nothing more. Making criminals out of people living their lives, destroying families over petty offenses, and then claiming there is a war on them when they initiate violence.

This FML has nothing to do with the police being brutal or dishonest or anything, it just is one cop being an asshole because he needs to meet his ticket quota. So all your talk about cops being bad and blah blah is just hate-mongering and has no place here. Take it to YouTube or reddit or something.

I smiled at the cop in a cruiser once and he then proceeded to follow me 3 miles home. When I pulled into my driveway, he did a u-turn and left. I guess smiling looks suspicious. I no longer smile or give eye contact in passing.